Into The Heart Of The Night
by SparksFlyOut
Summary: "This, what we have here... this whole thing... can only end in tragedy." A mage and a demon hunter must join forces as they find themselves on a slippery slope to Hell; will they overcome, or will those, who are loved the most, perish? Jeff/Punk AU.
1. Prologue

**A/N:** I realize that the whole 'wrestling meets supernatural' thing is kind of a worn out concept to some, but I've always loved it, and I think I'm going to give it a go as an experimental sort of thing (you can really justify anything by that :D). Also, it's AU, so in theory I don't have to feel shitty about writing RPF. Yay! (I still do feel shitty, though, but my Junk feels are raging on and this is really all I can do about them.) I suck at writing chapter fics, and I have no idea whether I'll ever finish this, but we'll see how this goes down. Or something.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing; all the recognizable people portrayed here are property of themselves, and whatever situation they might be in, it's all product of my imagination and has never happened for real. Loguerock is a made-up town somewhere in New Hampshire, U.S. (fans of Star Wars might recognize the name).

**Warnings:** I suppose I'm gonna go with mandatory slash, gore and language (for the whole piece). I'm not sure if this will be worthy of the M rating, but might as well play it safe.

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**Prologue  
**

It was noon at North Arden Boulevard in Los Angeles, California, and even though he did not know it yet, it was going to be the very last day of one John Morrison's deplorably short yet action-filled life.

John was having his first day off in a month, and he had planned to do absolutely nothing the whole day. He'd woken up for a short moment when Melina had left for work at nine and gently kissed him goodbye, as she had done every single morning during the three years they had lived together. After that John had blissfully fallen asleep again, not waking up until eleven thirty, rested and relaxed, and he had thought: _life's pretty damn good right now._

Had he had any time to think about it later, he would have berated himself for jinxing it.

After waking up, he had taken a long, hot shower, put on the most comfortable clothes he owned and was now standing in the in front of the bathroom mirror, frowning. He had promised to himself that he would not think about anything work related on his day off, but the jagged scar on his left shoulder that he had gotten three months ago still hadn't healed completely, and he guessed that it never would. The blade that had cut it had felt like pure acid, and even though the demon using it had been only a grade up from mediocre, the weapon it possessed had made the fight a lot more demanding than what he had expected at the time – and now it seemed that in the process he had acquired a battle wound that would not go away that easily.

When John first had started hunting demons at twenty-three, the whole thing had been... well, definitely not easy money, but easier than what it was now. Demons were more organized and cunning nowadays, benefiting from the development a much as humans, and they were harder to find – being the masters of disguises that they were. And to make the matters more complicated, there was, and was undoubtedly always going to be, people who were ready to sacrifice their lives or souls (or those of their loved ones) to gain something, misguidedly thinking that demons were creatures to keep their promises to any extent, as if they somehow had no other choice. People usually came to notice, had they not died before it, that it was only the other party that was made to keep its promise, and it was by no means the demon.

But as the creatures invented new tricks, so did people. John smiled to himself. He had a couple of pretty neat, new weapons that he could not wait to go out and test properly – this Wednesday, however, was devoted to resting and nothing else.

He had just gotten his razor out of the bathroom cabinet when the doorbell started chiming its cheery tune. He wasn't expecting company, but Melina sometimes came home around noon to have her lunch break, and he couldn't think of who else it could be.

"Mel, hon, you forgot your keys again?" he amusedly called as he stepped out of the bathroom. Sometimes he could have sworn that the woman he shared his life with had her head full of holes; every time something went in, something else dropped out.

Putting his damp hair on a ponytail, John padded to the door. "Why didn't you tell me you were coming home for lunch? I would've -"

His sentence was cut off as he opened the door and there was a dead man standing in front of him.

Or at least a man who should have been dead. John had always complimented himself about his quick reflexes, but now surprise faded them away as though they had never existed - just for a moment, but it was usually the moments just like that one to distinguish a dead man from an alive one, and this one was no exception.

John's memory for faces, however, worked as well as it always had, and during the life-long seconds he could only stare, his brains came to a conclusion. He had killed this man four years ago, and yet there he was now, as alive as one could be, a cold sneer twisting his face.

"Hello there, Johnny boy. Greetings from Hell."

Before John could say or do anything, or even take his next breath, a hand reached out towards him and a swift, violent presence of magic blurred the edges of his vision. Pain exploded so suddenly and viciously that there was no room left for anything else; breath hitched in his throat as his airways clogged, and he felt as if his insides were turning into liquid. What hurt the most, though, was the scar on his shoulder, reacting to the burst of dark magic by screaming out execrable pain all over, turning the blood in his veins into something scorching and corroding.

With a flick of his wrist the man sent John flying through the hallway and into the living room. He didn't even feel as he hit the wall, but his eyes were wide open, tearing from pain, and he saw the intruder stepping in, closing the door behind him.

"Nice place you've got here," he said, clearly gloating, but John hardly heard it; blood was rushing between his ears like a tidal wave, drowning out everything else, a cry of agony stuck in his throat as he desperately tried to draw in a breath. And yet the click of the lock sounded much too loud in his ears, as if that had been the very sound that sealed his fate once and for all.

Because his fate was sealed, he knew it; this was not even the beginning yet and he already knew it. Promises of it were everywhere in the air. John had never been the one to give up, he could not afford that in his position, but unless something unexpected happened, there was not a thing he could do to save himself. He was crucified against the wall, unable to move a muscle or shout out for help; he knew he should not have been so careless, but his work rarely followed him home. It seemed to him that after all these years he still did not understand to expect the unexpected - he had gotten cozy, and this was the price to be paid for it.

But none of that really mattered to John at that moment. The only thing that he could think about, the only thing he really, truly cared about, was the fact that Melina was out of the house, and he could not bring himself to care about what would happen to him as long as she would stay unharmed.

"I was rather hoping your lovely girlfriend to be here," the man said from beneath John, as if he had read his thoughts, "or is she a wife already?" John shuddered violently as darkened eyes examined him with almost boyish interest, as though he had been a butterfly caught in a pin instead of a man; food to the wolves.

"A shame, really, I had so much planned for the both of you... well, I guess I'm gonna have to settle just for you then."

"Fuck you," John managed to spit out, and it felt like coughing up flames. He was drenched in cold sweat, the sharp tang of blood and bile burning in his throat, and he could feel the pain intensifying and twisting his muscles like a convulsion when the other man stepped closer, his grin all cunningness and pearl-white teeth.

"There's an idea."

The man's eyes flickered on his left. "Ah, but I almost forgot." With leisure steps he went over to John's CD stand, running his forefinger along the backs of the plastic cases, until he found something that apparently pleased his eye and snatched the CD out of the stand, glancing John from the corner of his eye.

"How about that. I never would've thought you were a fan of classical music, John."

John wasn't, and the Tchaikovsky that the man had pulled out was the only classical CD John owned, given to him by Melina's parents years ago as a Christmas present. He had always felt kind of bad for never listening to it.

And there she was again, in a blink of an eye; Melina, a clear-cut picture of her on his retinas, and he thought about breakfasts and sunny days at the backyard and Christmases that would never come, and somewhere underneath the strain and the pain his heart broke.

The man walked to John's open laptop, put the CD in and turned the volume up, and soon the bombastic notes of Tchaikovsky filled the house and John's head, fading away Melina's tanned, beautiful face. John was given a skewed smile.

"It would be unfortunate if your neighbors heard us, don't you think?"

John's neighbors could not have heard a thing even if it hadn't been for the music; they were all at work, and hazily John thought that his tormentor had probably figured out that much, hence the visiting time. The music had some other purpose, and John had a pretty clear idea what it was: a way to stroke a monstrous ego, something to get off on.

He had not thought about his death much, but the rare times he had, he had pictured it to be very different from this. Violent, yes. Unexpected, probably. Done because of one's desire to revenge - how could it not be? But he had thought he would go out doing the same thing he had done up until this point in his life: fighting. He would have taken that; it was as good as death could ever be. But to die like this, in his own home, completely at someone else's mercy... it was something he had not imagined. It was excruciating to think about the fact that someone could just walk into his house and fuck it all up, turning his home into his mausoleum.

Looking unbearably self-satisfied, the man walked back to John, and after eyeing him for a little while he reached his arm upwards, pressing his palm hard on John's fabric-clad chest. Magic crackled, and this time John did scream. He screamed in the midst of the crescendo until he felt like his lungs had turned into ashes; he didn't know how much time had passed (it could have been seconds as well as hours), but the next thing he knew was that he was on the floor, feeling like he had been lying on smoldering coals instead of cool marble. The man was hovering over him, knees both sides to John, and through the music and his own wheezing breaths he could hear a whisper right next to his ear.

"Before this is over, you, sir, are going to beg for me to kill you in ten different languages."

And John knew it was true - anything anyone had ever said to him in his entire life had not rung more true than that statement. Because already he would have been ready to put a bullet to his head just to make it all stop, and he knew it was going to get a lot worse.

Much later, John died, and the last thing his agonized brain registered was eyes blue as the sky and the acrid smell of burning flesh.


	2. Home

**A/N:** Thankyou for the comments, they're much appreciated! I made myself a promise that if some kind of a miracle happens and even one person starts following this, I'm obliged to continue, so I guess there's no going back now... shit. :D

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**Chapter One: Home  
**

_The world seems full of good men, even if there are monsters in it._

_- Bram Stoker's Dracula_

Phil Brooks woke up in the middle of the night, and there was a thought in the back of his head, pulsing in rhythm with the beat of his heart: _there is definitely a storm coming_.

He did not care how much of a cliché it was; it was the one thing he had brought back with him, so the chances were that meant something. Not necessarily anything big, but it was often the trivial things that mattered the most. During his thirty-four years of living he had come to understand that dreams were rarely just dreams, and when deciphered properly, one could learn a great deal from them.

Not that he had really missed this, though. This was the third time during that week he had waken up from his nightmares, to cold sweat and prickling fear, and he could not recall the last time he had seen such dreams. It had been years ago in any case - he didn't sleep all that much nowadays, he didn't have the time for it, and something that he saw as a plus side was not having to suffer from his overactive subconscious, bleeding into his memories. Apparently, however, the maximum of three hours of sleep per night was not enough to keep all that at bay anymore, and he wondered why that was.

It was weird. He tried to contemplate what might have triggered the dreams, but he couldn't think of anything substantial. The week had been fairly normal (or as normal as his weeks would ever get) as well as the whole month, and he could not remember anything truly out of ordinary happening. But he wanted to get to the bottom of it, because the amount of demons that he saw during daytime was quite enough for him - he did not want to have to endure them even in his sleep. It felt too much like giving in completely.

Phil clicked the bedside lamp on and rubbed his face, trying to make the gruesome visions disappear from his head. In his dream there had been razor-sharp nails, terror and cold, grinning faces, and he wondered whether or not he might be able to fall asleep again, but he knew it was probably a vain expectation.

And true enough, after staring at the ceiling for at least twenty minutes and deciding that no, he was not going to get any more sleep, Phil finally got up, and the first thing that he did that morning was almost tripping over on his half-empty suitcase lying in the middle of the floor - he never bothered to completely empty it as he never knew when he was going to need it next. In the pale light of the bedside lamp his flat looked like a right mess, but it was all the same to him - no one ever visited him anyway, and he had never been one of those people who cleaned up for their own good.

He put the coffee machine on (having done it for so many years that his moves felt completely automatized) and while the beverage was making, he proceeded to check his phone and his e-mail; there was nothing new, only the one voice mail from reverend Michaels, asking Phil to call him whenever he got the time. Well, he did now. He had ignored the text last night but only because he had been in the middle of work, and he was pretty interested to hear what the reverend got for him. Besides the message had sounded sort of pressing; 'whenever you got the time' probably meant something more along the lines of 'this is urgent as hell'. He knew the man was probably not going to be very happy about the interruption in the middle of the night, but then, had someone not gotten used to Phil's diurnal rhythm after working with him for several years, they really only got themselves to blame.

The phone rang six times on the other end before a deep, sleepy voice mumbled; "Hello?"

"Morning, reverend," Phil said, a degree more cheerily than what he felt, rummaging through a heap of clothes to find a clean pair of socks. "I didn't wake you up, now did I?"

"What the..." There was a groan and the sound of whispering sheets, followed by slight clattering of something. "Phil, you do realize it's three thirty the morning, right?"

"Yeah, well, I can't sleep anyway, so I thought I might as well do something constructive."

"And waking me up in the dead of the night is your idea of constructive?"

Phil clicked his tongue, giving up on his search of the socks and padding barefoot to his tiny kitchen. "Hey, you asked me to call you and I did. You didn't specify the time. What's up?"

"Assuming you mean the work department and not my private life," the reverend said rather dryly, "I kind of thought I might have a job for you."

"'Kind of thought'?" Phil scoffed. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means it might be just be a rumor; nevertheless, we should probably look into it." Without wasting time for any ineffectualities, he continued, "You remember a man named Chris Irvine?"

"Irvine." Phil tasted the name, trying to find the face to match it. "Florida, 2008. A sleazy guy, a second-grade mage, I'd say, but still pretty dangerous. Fucking around with stuff he knew nothing about." He opened the fridge door, frowning at its contents. "But he was killed in the midst of it all back then. I think Morrison had his fingers on that one."

"Sounds about right," the reverend said, a grim edge to his tired voice. "If it is more than a rumor, then it could mean trouble for all of us."

The cheese had gone old two days ago, but Phil took it out of the fridge along with a jar of pickles anyway, pushing the fridge door shut with his knee. "_What_ rumor?"

"I take it that you haven't heard the news from Los Angeles?"

"No, I haven't." Phil was starting to get irritated with the general crypticness that seemed to be some kind of a regular characteristic amongst the church men everywhere. "Care to explain what you're on about?"

"I'd rather not do it over the phone." No, of course he wouldn't. Phil sighed as the reverend continued; "I've got a funeral in the morning, come by the church around eleven. We'll talk then."

"But I -"

"_We'll talk then_," Michaels repeated emphatically, and Phil knew it was a vain effort trying to argue the matter any further. Taking a softer tone, the older man added; "Try to sleep a little before that, will you?"

"Uh-huh. Bye." Phil closed the phone and rolled his eyes. One could always trust the reverend to act like a father worried about his son; something that Phil would not have taken from anybody else in the world. He was not a religious man, and he didn't like churches, but he went most times the reverend asked him to come by - the older man was the closest of what Phil could call a friend, even though he knew there would never be a day in his life when he would actually admit that to the reverend (and the man presumably knew it without saying, anyway). Friends, as such, were a luxury that Phil had neither time or interest for, and he did not really miss those kinds of trivialities, either.

He made himself a sandwich from the ingredients available and poured himself a big cup of coffee; he knew he drank way too much of it, along with Pepsi, and he was pretty sure that should he die now and performed an autopsy, there would be a flood of caffeine inside of him and nothing else. But it was undeniably the fuel that kept him going, like sugar or nicotine to some, and it was definitely better than the waste of time that most people called sleeping.

He put the slice of bread on top of the steaming mug and opened the balcony door, being greeted by the gradually cooling mid-September wind. The town beneath him was yet to wake up for a new day, and something akin to pride fluttered in his heart, light and warm.

Phil had been living in Loguerock for two and a half years, which was exceptionally long by his standards. More and more hunters traveled constantly, never settling in a certain place for more time than necessary, and that was what he had done for twelve years - since nineteen until thirty-one. A few weeks prior to his thirty-first birthday he had been so spent and weary that he had decided to settle down for a little while and continue traveling from state to state after a year or so; aware of the fact that had he continued like he had until that point, he would have eventually gotten careless and hasty, and he would not have been any good to anyone as a corpse.

But he had come to notice that over the years he had grown quite fond of his homeplace. It had crept under his skin in a sneaky, small town kind of way, and after a year had passed, he had noticed that he had responsibilities towards Loguerock; responsibilities he could not just abandon no matter how much he might have wanted to. To him being a hunter was all about killing, not about sentimentality, and being able to call a certain place home after twelve years of aimless drifting, years full of blood, was a thought that scared the living hell out of him.

But he had stayed - for now, anyway. There was work available, and that was pretty much all that mattered to Phil; New Hampshire was not the busiest place when it came to demons, but Vermont and especially Maine made sure that he would not be getting lazy anytime soon. He did not know what in Maine especially pulled all sorts of supernatural things towards it, but the state was buzzing with them (he remembered someone jokingly telling him that it was probably because of Stephen King's books, but the reference had been lost on Phil). Last year someone had even called from New Mexico, asking him to come and take care of an extremely difficult demon problem they had encountered - they had even volunteered to pay the gas expenses for the whole trip, even though Phil knew for a fact that there was more than one perfectly competent demon hunters within the state lines, and even more in their neighbor Texas. But Phil had gone and done what he was paid to do, and he had done outstanding job as always - any other way to do his work was practically unknown to him.

Phil knew that he had gained somewhat of prestige in certain circles, and he could not deny that it felt nice to get recognition from something that had all the requirements to pull him into six feet under with it any given moment. Demon hunting was a respected occupation and it paid off pretty well if one was good at it, but it took its toll and then some - hunters rarely lived over the age of fifty, and even though some of them had families, many had decided to be lone wolves for the rest of their lives, or at least as long as they had something to do with the underworld. In certain professions family only did one so much good.

At the end of the day, though, none of that really mattered to Phil. It was the life he lived, the air he breathed, and he would continue doing it until the one last demon... or until the end of the world itself. He did wonder, occasionally, what it would be like to surface from the darkness for the first time in over a decade and actually breathe in the air that was not contaminated with smoke and sulfur - his musings were, however, always short-lived. It was an odd world to him, the real world; it had slipped from his fingertips a long time ago, and he could not say that he missed it much.

He finished his sandwich, his thoughts drifting back to Tampa, Florida and Irvine. He was not sure if it was normal that there were rumors spreading around that had something to do with a dead man, but one thing he _was_ sure about: there was no way it could be a good sign. Chris Irvine had been a nuisance during his lifetime - a kind of nuisance who had been responsible for people's deaths, and even though he'd had to do a bit of reminiscing before recalling the man, the details had come rushing back and he remembered the whole thing now, clear as a day.

Phil shrugged, and downing the last of his coffee he stepped out of the balcony and shut the door behind him. Whatever this was about, it would probably sort itself out in one way or another.


End file.
